Facebook/Africa Check Health Fellowship 2020 for African Journalists

Based in the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Africa Check seeks to appoint a Health Fellow (Full-time)

Application Deadline: 31st August 2020

About the Award: We are offering a year-long fellowship, in partnership with Facebook, to deepen our health misinformation work. Over the past several months, our team has increasingly focused on debunking Covid-19 misinformation, and we want to expand our capacity to combat health misinformation and surface more reliable information to people.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:

• A bachelor’s degree
• Five years’ experience in fact-related fields such as media, research and academia
• Specialist subject knowledge in health
• Well-honed nonsense detector
• Passion for news, and in particular health news
• Ability to act impartially
• Attention to detail
• Ability to explain complex issues in simple language
• Strong numeracy, analytical and research skills
• Resilient self-starter who takes ownership of projects while working collaboratively in a team environment
• Fluency in an African language/French (advantageous)
• Experience in working across diverse geographies and cultures (advantageous)

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be Taken at (Country): University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, SA

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Key responsibilities include:

• Researching and producing fact-check reports on key health claims circulating in public debate in South Africa and southern Africa
• Researching and producing health-related factsheets and guides to increase the public’s access to accurate and reliable information
• Acting as a spokesperson for Africa Check, including speaking at events, conferences and in the media on our health misinformation efforts
• Supporting our efforts to build impactful partnerships with reliable health experts and health bodies
• Monitoring both social and mainstream media and other relevant channels for health
  claims of concern
• Working with our impact team to identify trends in health misinformation across the continent, and effectively communicate those insights to help us and others in the fact-checking and media community continuously learn and improve our approach to
  health fact-checking
• Finding and implementing innovative ways to better coordinate our health misinformation efforts across our four countries of operation
• Assisting in training workshops and other events for media, civil society organisations, the general public and policymakers
• The fellow will have access to training modules from third-party experts as well as from the team at CrowdTangle, Facebook’s social analytics tool

Duration of Award: 1 year

How to Apply: Submit a CV with a cover letter explaining why you would be ideal for the position toinfo@africacheck.org by 31 August 2020 using the following subject line: “Application health fellow”. In your cover letter, suggest a health claim in the news that should be fact-checkedand importantly, why you think it matters, and what you would do to combat its spread.

GOODLUCK

Visit Award Webpage for Details